Sunday, January 31, 2010

Books in Translation...

As we start our major section moves this new year, the store will be a new maze to get lost in. One of these moves that I am excited about is a display in the front of the annex that will highlight books in translation. We have always prominently displayed foreign literature and fiction and this is just another opportunity to feature more of these books that are rarely featured in a lot of bookstores...

My most recent read was The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, one of Finland's most widely read authors. It is for her Moomin books—a series of graphic novel/comic strip/innovative kid's books—that she is most famous for...

The True Deceiver, though Jansson supposedly wrote it for eight-year-olds, is not to be taken lightly. This books describes, as Ali Smith puts it in her Introduction, "...a sharply pertinent discourse on the relationships between art, nature, fame and identity; a discussion of the place and role of the artist and of the mysterious sources of creativity." There is so much depth to this sleek, beautiful tale; so much loneliness and so much sadness.

The story of Katri Kling, her brother Mats and Anna Aemelin, the small town's resident celebrity and recluse, is a psychiatric thriller without the usual deception in plot, it merely compels you quickly through the landscape and the long winter months. It is, as I said before, a terribly beautiful book.